It might seem strange to suggest that a team that had already won two stages and held the race’s yellow jersey for two days had a monkey on its back. But until Mark Cavendish’s win in Stage 7 on Friday, it felt more like a gorilla.

That is, after all, the nickname for Lotto-Soudal’s Andre Greipel, the burly German sprinter who got the better of Cav in two field sprints. Cavendish is one of the finest sprinters of his generation; perhaps the best. Entering the 2015 Tour de France, he was third in all-time stage wins, with 25 victories. And he races for a team, Etixx–Quick-Step, that gives him incredible firepower in the leadout.

But it had been almost two years to the day since the last time he crossed the finish line first in a Tour stage, and slightly more than that since his last victory in a bunch sprint at the Tour. Although Cavendish has not lacked for victories since, he hasn’t scored them at the torrid pace of his early years, leading to whispers that he had been eclipsed by riders like Peter Sagan or Alexander Kristoff or Marcel Kittel as the best sprinter in cycling.

Today’s win pushed back strongly against that narrative. In a classic field sprint, Cavendish did what he does best, fighting through traffic and holes that seemed to impossibly open just wide enough—thanks to a shoulder nudge here and a quick dash there—to give him a clean line to the finish, where his finishing kick proved unbeatable.

One of Cavendish’s team directors at Etixx, Brian Holm, said the other day that had Cavendish won the Stage 2 sprint it might have let him be more relaxed in the coming stages. The implication was that the Stage 5 sprint, where Greipel again won out, might have gone a bit differently if Cav hadn’t been under so much pressure.

That pressure is now gone. And, thanks to the way that Tour organizers re-jiggered the green jersey competition this year, Cavendish is now firmly back in the hunt. Greipel still leads, with 199 points. And Sagan, thanks to his remarkable consistency—he’s finished sixth or better on every road stage so far—is second, at 187. But Cavendish isn’t far back at 151 points.

The trouble is that opportunities now become few and far between. There are realistically only three stages left in the race that look like good candidates for sprint finishes: Stage 13, to Rodez; Stage 15, to Valence; and the final stage in Paris. Only one, Paris, is an almost-sure thing for a field sprint.

That could change the complexion of the race in the coming days, as the sprinters turn their focus to the intermediate sprints. There, again due to organizers’ changes, there are more points on offer than in past years, so expect aggressive racing.

The next rider to strike could be Sagan. As cycling’s most versatile rider, he could be a terror if given a free hand. But his responsibilities are split between hunting stage wins and helping his Tinkoff-Saxo team leader, Alberto Contador, in the overall classification.

Sagan’s main problem is that other racers tend to mark him exclusively. In Stage 6, when Etixx rider Zdenek Stybar attacked on the finishing climb, every rider in the front looked to Sagan to chase. It’s almost as if they are willing to lose a stage to anyone but Sagan. Saturday’s Stage 8 is, on paper, tailor-made to Sagan’s strengths.

The finishing climb of the Mur de Bretagne is a little less steep than Stage 3’s Mur de Huy: two kilometers long at 6.9 percent average. But the steepest section is at the bottom. The climb will favor patience and the ability to be well placed for a late attack. Sagan won’t have to worry about pure sprinters like Greipel and Cavendish. But he will have to contend with GC riders and stage hunters like Greg Van Avermaet of BMC. If Sagan can pull off a stage win, then that, along with his consistency on sprint stages, could be the difference in his hunt for a fourth straight green jersey.

That’s not all: With today’s four-second bonus for a third-place finish, Sagan is now in second overall, 11 seconds behind Sky’s Chris Froome. If he wins on the Bretagne and there is more than a one-second gap to Froome, Sagan would also don the yellow jersey. That’s an incentive worth fighting for.

Don’t expect Froome to give it up easily; while Froome was fine with the race lead belonging to a team like Etixx, he’ll want to keep the jersey from Tinkoff ahead of the team time trial. Teams go in reverse order of their best-placed rider on overall time, so Sky will want to keep the jersey so that they start last and have the benefit of knowing Tinkoff’s and BMC’s pace at the intermediate time checks.

Speaking of strategy in the jersey competitions, yesterday we mentioned that polka-dot jersey wearer Daniel Teklehaimanot would likely go out on the attack again in Stage 7, as there was a Category 4 climb early in the stage.

Sure enough, the MTN-Qhubeka rider went for it and got it. Organizers also re-figured the KoM competition for 2015, with a more progressive points structure that prizes bigger hills and offers stingier awards for small climbs. With four points now to Joaquim Rodriguez’s two, the only way that the Katusha rider can take back the jersey would be to win on the Mur de Bretagne and take the two points on offer (he would get the tie-breaker for having won points on bigger climbs). Short of that happening, Teklehaimanot would be all but assured of holding the KoM jersey until Tuesday’s first big mountain finish.

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